tobys-brain

Another year, another Mother's Day card for my awesome wife! It's always a challenge to come up with a new image every year. I try to reference something significant we've done, which is usually related to hiking, skiing, etc. (or having another kid, getting a dog...), which means I often turn to family pictures I've taken from our adventures. This helps me out with "aging" the caricatures of our kids/dragons, but I'm also able to capture some unique locations we've been to, which add a little more meaning to the cards every year. I used a variety of inking pens for the line work (mostly Mangaka) and Copic markers for the grey tones. It's a fun little annual project. If you want to see the other cards from throughout the years, go check out the recent blog post on www.tobys-brain.com

New Shirt Friday! Here's the latest shirt available on my Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/listing/687941106… This was supposed to be a simple tweak of some old art into a shirt, but for every little tweak I made I spotted a dozen more things I wanted to improve, so I scrapped it and started from scratch, using the old art as inspiration. This is part of the Elemental line of shirts I'm working on that depict aspects of nature or elements (earth, fire, air, etc). Go decorate your torso and encourage everyone you know to do the same, because reasons.

I originally drew this image for my youngest son's elementary school yearbook. They allowed parents to submit something to go into print to wish your kid well as they headed off to fifth grade. I started this tradition with my oldest son, but this is probably my best of the three. I decided I had to turn it into a shirt, so, I splashed in some color, changed the wording on Plunger Monkey's sign to appeal to a broader audience than just my son, and here it is. It's available in purple and black (the shirt color, not the cat color. My youngest is obsessed with purple, as well as cats).

www.etsy.com/listing/698261489…

New shirt available at my Etsy store, inspired by the crazy, now viral, video I captured a of a bobcat demonstrating some parkour skills to nab a squirrel in my back yard. 28% of my profits on these shirts go right to The Big Cat Rescue to help protect wild cats worldwide.
My Etsy store: www.etsy.com/shop/PlungerMonke…
This shirt: www.etsy.com/listing/680746684…
The Parkour Bobcat video that started it all: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8HNYK…

My debut children's book as arrived! It's been a long time coming, but I finally jumped through all the business, legal, and administrative hoops to set myself up as an LLC with a few Imprints so I can conduct my art business in a more official manner. I first learned this tongue twister as a scout, and revived it once I became an adult leader for my own kids in scouts (I'm currently a scoutmaster). You can grab a copy at www.amazon.com/10-Things-One-H…